These companies go toextreme lengths to achieveequal pay for equal work

• SALESFORCE. COM In 2015, the SanFrancisco-based CRMcompany analyzed itspayroll and then spent

$3 million to close the
pay gap it found. This
year, it spent another

$3 million toppingup salaries when another auditshowed that the gap had returned.

“It’s a moving target,” wrote EVP
Cindy Robbins at the time. “It must
be consistently monitored and
addressed.”

• BUFFER The social media management platform, based in San
Francisco, posts a list of its salaries,
as well as the formula it uses to
determine them. The transparency
has helped the company get closer
to a near-zero wage gap for those
in similar roles, says spokesperson
Hailley Grifs, and company-wide,
the gap between male and female
employees is now $2,400 per year,
down from the $9,500 found
in the frst salary audit. “We still
have more work to do to get to
zero,” says Grifs.

• SKILLSHARE This online learning
company in New York City ended
salary negotiations in April 2017

after a review found that good
negotiators were making up
to $10,000 per year more than
others with similar jobs, says COO
Matt Cooper. Today, “take it or leave
it” ofers are based on a simple grid
that assigns salary according to job
type and skill level. Cooper says the
new policy has helped the company
achieve gender wage parity and
hasn’t hurt its hiring spree–the

50-employee company added 15

stafers since it was adopted.

WORKING IN A DATA MINE

Miriam Altman, co-founder
of Kinvolved, a New York
City–based educational
software and consulting
company, is using the vast
amount of surprisingly
specifc salary data that’s
available for free to benchmark her salary ofers. She
points to the AngelList
website’s free tool, which
has information on pay
rates by job role and
location. She also uses
Glassdoor.com, a free
crowdsourced database for
job-market data. Finally,
she collects anecdotal
information at regularly
scheduled meetings with
a peer group of CEOs in
her industry. The process
helped her confdently
make successful ofers
to a digital-content coordinator and an impact-assessment coordinator.

It also revealed to her that
“we were overpaying for
certain positions,” she says.

For companies with more
resources, PayScale, an
online service, conducts
ongoing salary surveys of
job seekers and verifes its
results. Its localized salary
data is available via subscription.

HIRE FROM WI THIN

Dennis Hoover, co-founderof the Organic Coup, a SanFrancisco–based fast foodchain, has found that theeasiest way to managesalary-discussion restric-tions is by promoting pri-marily from within. Hooverknows what he’s paying hisexisting staf, and hiringinternally means retentionrates are higher and “youdon’t have to deal with a lotof bad habits that peoplebring from other compa-nies,” he says. As Hooveradds new locations, heplans to hire entry-levelworkers at just-above-market rates, and to trainexisting hourly workers tomove into management.

While the law says hiring
managers can’t initiate
conversations about prior
salary, if candidates ofer
that information, it’s fair
game, says James Reidy, a
lawyer at Sheehan, Phinney,
Bass & Green in Manchester,
New Hampshire. (He
advises many companies
afected by the salary-discussion bans.) “Once
they disclose it, you can ask
about it,” he says. Employers should make sure that
they have trained their
interviewers to avoid
overtly “asking for the information, or prodding in any
way,” says Jason Habinsky, a
partner at law frm Haynes
and Boone in New York
City. It’s also vital that HR
departments amend their
employment applications
to remove any prior-salary
questions if the application
is used in a location
afected by a ban.

Welcome to Coverleaf. We hope you are enjoying your digital issue of .
Want to continue receiving your FREE digital companion issue?
Click the "Get More Issues!" button below and we will deliver your
digital companion directly to your inbox for the term of your print
subscription.